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Events & Standings

On normal non-Covid mornings, my routine before I go to work always consists of a few things. Sometimes they happen at 8:37 am and sometimes they happen at 10:12 am but always they happen. I brush my teeth as the shower heats up, and then I shower. I can’t tell you the last time I went to work or school before that without showering, and frankly it might have never happened. I also can’t tell you the last time I went to work and Bjergsen wasn’t in the LCS, because frankly it has literally never happened for me. So for the first time since 2013, TSM will go to work without Bjergsen in the mid lane. They’ll go to work without the shower.
Back in 2015, in a [*Legends Rising*][1] episode, Bjergsen said, “My biggest fear is definitely that I might just end up not being good enough anymore. In a year or two there’s going to be a new Bjergsen -- someone who is better than me, and it’s going to be hard for me to keep up.”
Five years later and those fears never came to fruition. Not any part of that quote ended up coming to life. He is coming off arguably the most dominant stretch of play in his career in the LCS -- the lower bracket run to the Finals is one that we can now look back on and wonder if he knew it’d be his last. He stood on the brink of elimination and an impending retirement three times against the Golden Guardians, two times against Team Liquid, and then once against FlyQuest, almost like a weird 3-2-1 countdown to the end of his career. But each time the Nexus exploded, he rose from his chair knowing there was more League of Legends to be played.
He was never “not good enough” and a “new Bjergsen” never came, and no matter who fills his shoes or how well they do it, there will ever only be one Bjergsen. And he will, with this retirement, never be dubbed “not good enough.” Any chipping away at him was always tied to strings -- not good enough to carry the rest of his team or not good enough to beat the best player in the world or not good enough to do x or y. It was never strictly just not good enough.
Of the forty players that started the LCS Spring Split in 2014 when Bjergsen first debuted in the league, only four remain now. Bjergsen was a pillar for the league -- arguably *the* pillar -- and with his departure I am left asking, “Now what?”
In the time since he started, I graduated from my MFA. I fell in love and then I fell out of love and then I fell in love again. And out again. I visited a foreign country for the first time in my life, and then another one and another one. I moved from Indiana to California. I moved in with new roommates and then I moved out to be alone. My first family member passed away. My friends got married and had kids. And more kids! And, I think, this is not an unusual timeline for anyone in particular for the past six years.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDMNiH-vOrY

His retirement is the big gong that rings in a new era. It is a deep and hollow sound that says change is here. Or, rather, that’s not quite right. Time didn’t stop between when he started and now -- things have always been changing, just as he has always been changing. Look at the old TSM videos and you will see a tiny child who’d just dropped out of school. Compare it to the bearded man you see in, say, this [*Drive*][1] feature, and you’ll see it’s not that change is *now* coming. It’s just that we usually don’t see the changes until something forces us to really take a good hard look.
Hundreds of players have come and gone in the interim, and now Bjergsen adds his name to the rank and file. In just a couple years we’ll be crooning about the “good old days” of TSM, just as I fondly remember now the likes of Hai and the original Cloud9 squad or the days of Scarra’s adventures around the Baron pit with Dignitas. We might talk about Bjergsen and his wards, or exaggerate the Zilean pick as being the undefeated father time. But right now, it doesn’t feel real just yet. We are still in the final stretch of an on-going Worlds, and having had no live games since March, it is hard to say that any of this is real.
Eventually, though, I will wake up and complete my morning routine, and then I will walk towards the metro station and wait on the platform. The train’s lights will peek through the tunnel and then the slow rumble will crescendo until it comes to a stop. Then the doors open. Then I step inside and wait for it to carry me to work, as it has done so many times in the past. And maybe after that long commute -- when, finally, I arrive at the studio, and in mid lane for TSM sits a different face -- maybe then this will be real. Maybe then I will have changed.
If we are creatures of habit, then the LCS is now losing one of its oldest habits. The hole Bjergsen is leaving behind will be filled, if only because it must. Someone will do it -- poorly or greatly or most likely somewhere in the middle of that, and the legacy serving as their backdrop will be so enormous that it won’t seem fair. But Bjergsen has taught us to just keep going. At the beginning of *Legends Rising*, he says, “I was born in a small town in Denmark. One grocery store. One restaurant. It’s in the middle of nowhere… every time I saw an opportunity, I took it.”
One grocery store. One restaurant. One Bjergsen. No more, and no less. Or as is the case today, there is no more Bjergsen. There is one less Bjergsen.
[1]: https://youtu.be/Xwl-zWTbjnM